Upon further review

The Cubs should have won three of four in Arizona, but the bullpen which killed their season last year sure looks capable of doing the same thing this time around. Gee, it's almost like building it out of guys other teams are trying to give away isn't the best strategy.

There are replays and reviews and those aren't really the same thing, but over the weekend, it became clear that the Cubs need to rethink their approach to both of them.

On Friday night, the Cubs eschewed a chance to challenge a close play at home plate in the second inning. It would have been close, something Boog Sciambi non-sensically refers to as "50-50 calls," but if Nico Hoerner had been ruled safe instead of out, the Cubs would have had a 2-0 lead and had runners on the corners with two out and the top of their order coming up.

Granted, big Jimmy Taillon was pitching and he was mostly throwing batting practice to Eugenio Suarez so it probably wouldn't have mattered, but nobody knew that at the time.

Whoever the Cubs have in their secret replay room relaying the decision to Craig Counsell needs to be more open to factoring in what comes next instead of, "Well, it's only the second inning, we might need this challenge later." In regular season games each team gets one challenge, in the playoffs (and for some reason, the All-Star Game) each team gets two. After the seventh inning a manager can ask the crew chief to challenge something, so it comes down to how good your guy is at begging.

But it would be hard to think you should wait for a bigger moment than a play that could result in netting you a run and another at bat with a runner at third, instead of the inning just being over.

To their credit, the next night the Cubs did challenge an incredible Petecrow throw from center to nail the chugging Josh Naylor at third in the fourth inning of a tie game. It was very close, one Boog's "50-50s"^[1].

JD says in the highlight that the umps should have called Naylor out just because Petecrow made such a great throw, which is a good line. But I think you should get unlimited challenges for cool plays. If something cool happens and the team doing the cool thing doesn't get the call, they should be allowed to challenge just because it's cool. Who would disagree with this?

Cardinals fans, that's who. Oh, fuck them.

Here's the reason for all that long, aimless preamble. Marquee Sports Network has this tedious feature that dates back to the beginning of the godforsaken network and the chuckle-talking of David Ross. On Fridays, they interview the Cubs' manager during the game.

Let's not pretend it's for any reason other than the segment is sponsored. The manager is getting paid, so he endures it, and it's making the network money so they keep foisting it upon it. But it's just another, in a nightly string of, instances of Marquee interrupting the broadcast for nonsense. A lot of it is "let's throw it down to Taylor" but there's also the completely banal DraftKings promo in the seventh where they provide us some in-game odds that none of us give a shit about.

Anyway, the reason the manager interviews are so pointless is because Boog seldom asks them anything interesting and never anything about what just happened in the game. And Friday's was the best illustration of this, yet.